The purpose of the surgical drape is to place a bacteria barrier between the aseptic operative field and areas which are incapable of surgical cleansing. The drape also provides the physician while working on the patient, a sterile area on which to lay surgical instruments and the like. The drape should be sufficiently flexible or drapable so that it may somewhat conform to the contour of the body which it is covering, and so that it may hang down over the edges of the operating table without interfering with the physician's work. The drape should be absorbent so that it may collect exudate from the operative site and should also provide enough friction so that the drape does not slide off the patient during the operation.
Certain known disposable drapes consist of nonwoven mats of heat fusible fibers fused to one or both sides of thermoplastic sheets. However, in producing this type of fabric, the heat fusible fibers are fused so that the integrity of the fibers is destroyed. The present invention provides a multiple layer plastic film fuse bonded on at least one side to a layer of conjugate fibers having a low melting sheath and a high melting core. The sheaths of the conjugate fibers are fuse bonded to the plastic film at a temperature below the melt temperature of the cores of the conjugate fibers so that the cores retain their initial fiber-like integrity. A preferred embodiment of the present invention comprises a three-layer plastic film sandwiched between and fuse bonded to two layers of conjugate fibers. The inner layer of the plastic film is relatively high melting while the two outer layers of the film are low melting, the melt temperature of the outer layers of the film being close to the melt temperature of the fiber sheaths, so that excellent fusion takes place when these fiber sheaths and the outer layers of the film are bonded together or emboss bonded. In addition, the inner core of the three-layer plastic film is not fused during the bonding procedure and this prevents any perforations being formed in the plastic film during emboss bonding.